


Equilibrium

by doomedship



Category: The Good Doctor (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:41:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25616797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doomedship/pseuds/doomedship
Summary: The long road to finding it. Claire/Neil.
Relationships: Claire Browne/Neil Melendez
Comments: 10
Kudos: 103





	Equilibrium

**Author's Note:**

> Hello friends, I've dropped out of things a lot, I know. Just clearing out my archive with what's probably the last Melendaire piece I'll be sharing unless inspiration hits (we'll see what happens with S4, I guess?). I didn't do my usual read through before posting and I wrote this almost two months ago, so apologies for any mistakes. Oh, and if you squint really hard it's a finale rewrite. Lol.

Kayla asks her about it once, before she dies.

"That Dr Melendez. Are you thinking about it?"

She denies it vehemently; of course she does. She's busy fiddling with Kayla's pain meds, like she always does when she evades. Kayla's at home, on hospice, she's almost out of time. But she's finding the strength to give her meddling one last shot. 

"Of course not," she says, rolling her eyes calmly even as her heart gives an uneasy lurch inside her chest. "He's my boss."

Kayla shoots her a long and meaningful look, her tired eyes hollow in her face, but yeah, she still knows everything.

"Liar," she says, and Claire looks away. 

She wants to reply, but she doesn't think lying to the dying is something she supports. 

"Falling in love is not a disease you need to avoid catching," Kayla says. "Give things a go. With somebody, if not him."

She doesn't say anything, but she doesn't forget. Especially not when Dash nods his head at her as she's laying flowers by Kayla's headstone. 

  
...

Dash turns up at the hospital precisely nine months after Kayla dies.

She wouldn't have said yes to him at all if not for Neil; she wonders if that's as messed up as it seems.

...

It only takes her three weeks and four days to realise that she's kidding herself. 

In that time she works out the truth, and the truth is this: one, she is never going to fall in love with Dash Snyder. Two, she quite possibly already has with someone else, and there are no prizes for guessing who.

Her therapist is the only safe person in the world that she can tell; other than that she sits on the realisation and buries it under towering mounds of absolute terror. 

So she tells her therapist about how when Dash looks at her she just feels nothing much of anything, and how she thinks he's thinking about Kayla more often than he is about her when they're together. And importantly, how she's fine with that. 

She's more reluctant to talk about how when Neil looks at her she feels like somebody's hooked up her spine to a high voltage live wire, and simultaneously removed her ability to reliably transport oxygen into her lungs. Those feelings are hidden safely under much more generic descriptions of their relationship. "We get on," she says blandly. "He makes me laugh."

She tries to be practical and she makes a plan as she leaves her therapist's house. Step one is breaking things off with Dash. Step two is undefined. She hasn't yet written off emigration, or maybe faking her own death. Either of those are preferable to the alternatives, which are telling Neil how she feels, or _not_ telling him how she feels. She's not sure which currently seems more agonising. 

She's meant to meet Dash for dinner when she does it; in hindsight she probably should have said something before they got dressed up and met at a fancy restaurant. Classic her, she does it messily and gracelessly, saying the wrong thing at the worst possible time, and Dash is silent and ashen as he walks out. 

She shuts her eyes once, then orders herself something with a high percentage of vodka at the bar. No sense wasting a good dress, now that she's here. But she has the sense to remind herself to be careful, because old habits are tempting and so, so inadvisable. 

She sticks the heels of her hands against her eyes, and wonders why she can never get this right. 

She also wonders why her life is such a tragicomedy that as she's about to take a sip of her drink a very familiar, very not-what-she-needs-right-now voice pipes up from somewhere behind her. 

"Vodka on a school night? Must be serious business."

She shuts her eyes and steels herself before she turns around, pasting on a smile that she doesn't feel, and which he's bound to see through anyway because he always does. 

"Yeah, you know," she says, shrugging, deflecting. He'll see through that too. "I had a long day."

He looks at her for a long moment, and she just knows he's stepping effortlessly through her defences, and then he shrugs too. 

"Me too. Let's get dinner. I'm buying," he says, and he doesn't give her the option to figure out her excuse to get her out of it because he's already turned away, taking her drink with him. 

She trails after him and wonders on a scale from one to Shaun's love life how messy this is about to get. 

  
...

  
The wait staff are clearly familiar with him, the manager coming over to shake his hand as they're seated in a fancy booth she'd never normally get near. She's eyeing him a little scathingly as he sweet-talks the manager without shame, and the next thing she knows they're getting wine on the house delivered to the table. 

"What?" he says, cocky and annoying. "I'm a charming guy."

"Or you spend way too much time drinking here," she replies, and he just grins even more. She won't admit it, but she loves that look. It's when he's most relaxed, playful even. She has never seen him smile like that at anyone else in the hospital, and she guards that fact jealously, like a secret badge of honour. 

She tells herself then to relax; this is not the first time she's had dinner with him, and unless she does something truly spectacular tonight, she assumes it won't be the last. 

But it is the first time she's been on her own with him since she stopped lying to herself. And it seems to sit differently. Maybe she's losing her mind but it feels like the atmosphere was charged from the second they sat down, and she wonders whether that's something new or if it's always been like that, but she just didn't want to notice. 

"Aren't you meant to be at some brewery opening with Glassman tonight?" she says suddenly, to distract from her thoughts and because she's just remembered him telling her about it over the operating table, with a patient that never made it out. She takes a hard sip of her wine.

"Yeah," he says. He shrugs. "I bailed after one drink. Couldn't handle kissing ass three nights in a row."

She drinks to that; the hospital has been pushing fundraising hard lately, and the way Neil's given the brunt of it she sometimes thinks Aoki's about half a step away from auctioning off an evening with Dr Melendez. To be fair, he'd probably raise a princely sum. 

And here she is, getting it for free.

She orders the steak and doesn't feel bad about it; he looks approvingly at her and does the same. He leans over to top up her wine, and when all she can think about is counting how many buttons he has undone at the top of his shirt she makes a note to slow down on the alcohol.

"So, you want to tell me what brought you in here drinking your sorrows away?" he asks, and she realises with a stab of guilt that she's already forgotten about Dash. 

"I broke up with Dash," she says, slightly reluctant, slightly defiant. He doesn't react for a second, and it makes her wonder what exactly is going through his mind that makes him feel the need to school his expression like that. 

"Why?" he asks, and he's going for casual too, but she can see the tension in the lines of his shoulders. She doesn't know exactly what he is, but he is not indifferent. 

"Wrong guy," she says, fidgeting under his careful stare. "Right time or not."

He gives her an odd, contemplative smile as he recalls that conversation; in hindsight, his encouragement of her pursuing Dash seems a little too much, a little like trying to prove something that's obviously not true, but she's nowhere near brave or certain enough to call him out. 

Trying to navigate this is like wading through quicksand blindfolded.

"Sorry to hear that," he says, and she just lifts one shoulder, nothing more really springing to mind on the subject. It is what it is. And then their food arrives and the line of conversation is dropped, but she can feel him watching her when she's not looking and it feels like there's an intensity to the way he looks at her that she just doesn't think was there before. 

She glances up and takes him in, and yeah, he's _really_ doing it for her with that dark eyed scrutiny. And maybe it's the wine talking but she's staring right back at him with a brazenness she would never normally risk. 

The conversation as they eat is subdued, a little suggestive but also cautious; she thinks both of them are skirting around the very obvious tension that's crept up between them and made every subject seem somehow dangerous and taboo. In the end she can't stand it. She sits back and meets his eye and it's shocking how intense it feels, like he's stripping her bare before he's even laid a finger on her.

But a thing that's important to know: no matter how they might be staring at each other across the table, she is certain tonight will end with them going their separate ways. 

Anything else is unfathomable. He is far too duty-bound to slip up in this way, and she is far too cautious. To cross the crisp, sensible lines drawn up between them long ago is risking too much; she already has the asset of his friendship and it's worth more to her than almost anything else she has in her life. 

So no matter how charged the energy reverberating through the air between them, that particular line is not in their script. 

A second thing that's important to know: the fact that it isn't now doesn't necessarily mean it never will be. 

....

She visits Kayla's grave over the weekend.

She lays white lilies on her headstone and tells her she's sorry. 

She did try with Dash, she really did. But sometimes she wonders if she's actually just too fucked up to love like most people do. 

...

She asks him if he thinks there's something wrong with her, if her inability to open up to anyone is really something hardwired into her bones. The irony isn't lost on her that in saying this, she's more or less splitting her armour wide open for him. He gives her a long look, and she wonders if he's thinking the same.

"There's nothing wrong with you," he tells her, squaring boldly up against her so he can look her in the eye. "Everybody has things they need to work out."

They rarely touch, as a rule; he breaks it now, and puts his hand on her shoulder. 

She looks up at him and yeah, her head is still a mess, but one thing is for sure. She is capable of love, and actually, this is more than that.

It's always been more than love with him. What they have is true understanding, a selfless loyalty and faith that's unconditional and unwavering. It's as effortless as breathing, as perennial as the stars.

She thinks maybe the most important choices are made without even realising you've done it until those choices have already changed the shape and pattern of the whole universe around you, gently, softly, without making a sound. She thinks maybe that's what's already happened. 

But for all that that might be true, there is still such a long way to go. The next thing she must do is the one thing that she thinks she's probably been doing for most of her life.

She waits. 

...

They are a story of stops and starts. Of messy interludes, and strange uncertain times spent with the wrong people in the wrong rooms. Neither of them are saints, and this is such a slow road.

But all of the moments in between are only distractions; the men she sees are handsome and unattached and carefree, and she soon stops letting these things go anywhere, because on some level it's feeling far too much like betrayal. 

She doesn't owe him anything, not yet, but she'll never admit that it's always him she's thinking of when she finds a reason to say no to someone else. 

Theirs is a story of weeks and months, and her patience is wearing thin.

  
....

It's summer when everything is different again. 

She's shipped across state to another hospital on an organ swap; one heart for one kidney, two patients saved. But it's for a foreign dignitary paying a lot of money to be in St Bonaventure; Lim is beside herself trying to make sure the switch doesn't go wrong. The government is involved, and there are literally armed guards coming with her, watching her every move as she boards the helicopter and crosses the state. Staring at her as she picks up the heart, all wrapped up in ice. 

And she knows they're not fucking around, because any brief internet search reveals that this patient has had a very large hand in the ethnic cleansing currently raging in his home country, and he's as corrupt as he is powerful. 

She checks the donor heart, checks the temperature, wonders whether a new heart will make the bastard act like he has one. It's funny, how the heart is just a lump of flesh, sitting in her hand with nothing in it at all. The capacity to love obviously doesn't lie in there. 

Who you are and how you love lies somewhere else - this she already knows. It's tied up in the intangible, tied up in somebody else's soul.

"We do what we have to do," Neil tells her, when she's almost on her knees in the office from the emotional baggage of what she's been asked to do that day. Her head is in her hands; she feels like fucking screaming for the ways her godforsaken Hippocratic oath mean that she has to prolong the life of somebody who's going to end thousands of others. 

He sits down next to her, and for the first time in a while he breaks that no-touch rule again. 

She leans into his body under his arm like she's going to find absolution there; she's not surprised when she doesn't, but the sting of her guilt is lessened by the feel of his hand resting around her shoulder, of his thumb, moving slowly over the bare skin just beneath her sleeve. 

Like all things with them, the shift is achingly subtle. 

He turns his head and ghosts his lips to her temple; she is surprised, for a second, not used to him breaching the rules in more than one way. 

She turns her head to look up at him.

"It's not possible to be truly ethical," she says, and he holds her gaze for the longest moment before he nods. 

"Sometimes you just have to make a choice," he replies, and it's then that she knows. 

Not now, but soon. 

  
  
....

  
As it happens, she is the one to break the rule next, and not very long after that. He makes a call on a surgery that leaves the world with one more widow, one more child growing up without a dad.

It's not his fault, but he'll wear it like it is. They're alike like that.

She doesn't even try to tell him to forgive himself; instead she finds him on the balcony in the silent dead of night, and she puts her arms around him as she draws out her share of the guilt he's carrying.

She can feel his shaking breath as he lowers his head to her shoulder and rests it there; she has never known him to let anybody comfort him so readily before.

Later, he falls asleep with her on the end of the phone, and she waits until she's sure his breathing is slow and even before she hangs up. 

....

Come autumn, the tension is sky high.

In the end they just fall, guilelessly, perfectly, like all things him and her. 

It starts off innocently, like always. It's never been premeditated; she thinks it's just always been predetermined, a thing that's been as sure on the horizon as the next sunrise. 

He's at hers, which is something that's relatively new. At first they were awkward about that, because being in each other's home space is something else entirely to being in the outside world together. But somehow a one-off let's just go to mine because it's raining has now started to happen just because, and tonight is one of those nights. 

They're drinking wine and watching some show about doctors he somehow finds hilarious to watch, while she just rolls her eyes and keeps more of an eye on him than she does on the TV.

Watching him when he's off duty is one of her favourite things, though she keeps that very quiet. It's just something about the way he softens, grows calm, a teasing smile playing at the corners of his mouth whenever he looks at her. It's how she can slide her feet into his lap and have him wrap his hand around her ankle, rubbing his thumb over the ridges idly as he watches the screen. Completely at ease, no judgment. The things they do finally matching the things they feel. 

She's surprised when his thumb moves from her ankle to the bare stretch of skin below the leggings she's wearing, massaging in random circles over the tight muscle of her calf, and she takes in a breath. 

There used to be a rule, she thinks. There isn't anymore. 

He glances at her then, and seems to realise himself, but he doesn't stop his gentle motions. Her head is resting on the arm of the sofa and she lifts her head slightly, enquiring.

"What?" she asks, when he keeps looking, and he just smiles and shrugs, giving her calf a final squeeze before he lets it go.

She thinks for a moment, thinks about whether that's enough, and then she shifts herself up into a sitting position. Before she can talk herself out of it, she's swinging a leg over his lap with one hand on each of his shoulders, a sudden resolve firing up in her chest. He blinks up at her, surprised, but yeah, that looks like amusement and a telltale gratification dancing in his eyes. 

"Hi," he says, his hands drifting to rest on her hips automatically. 

"Hi," she says back, and she tilts her head as she studies him. 

He's always been a temptation, but that's no longer enough. 

When she kisses him it's almost like testing a theory; at first her eyes are open as she presses her lips to his, just enough to be a kiss, not enough to be difficult to back away from. But his lips are pliant against hers, his eyes immediately drifting shut, so she smiles to herself and lets hers close too as she slowly relaxes against him, her body leaning into him and her arms sliding round his neck.

It's a distracting kiss, she'll admit. Unhurried and slow in the way it builds, both of them letting it unfold naturally. It's the kind of kiss where time just sort of stretches out and in the end she's got no idea how long she's been sat there kissing him when she eventually pulls back, her cheeks flushed and her eyes bright. He's a little glazed over, a bit stunned, and she feels pretty pleased with herself as she leans back, considering, her arms still looped around him. 

"So that happened," he says, as his hands trail down her back. She just tips her head and smiles, suddenly coy, and he raises an eyebrow. "What exactly was that?"

"If I need to explain it to you maybe we shouldn't be doing this," she says dryly. He rolls his eyes and shifts her a little awkwardly in his lap, and yeah, she's already noticed exactly how he feels underneath her. 

"Let me rephrase. Are you planning on doing that again, or was it a one-hit wonder kind of thing?"

She smiles enigmatically down at him, and abruptly lifts herself off his lap. 

"Maybe," she says, and she tugs his hand so he gets up and looks at her with a question in his eyes. "Come find out."

...

It's been a long time since she first imagined what he'd be like in bed. Whether he'd be firm or gentle, vocal or quiet. She thinks about what he looks like, under all those crisp shirts and tailored suits, and whereabouts he would be most sensitive to her touch. The usual things.

She's never really thought to imagine how it would be so fundamentally different, just because it's him. How her heart would be racing, her entire body charged with the realisation that this is something she's been missing all along. She could never have foreseen the way that just standing in her bedroom staring across at him could feel like suddenly finding the key to a door that's been locked her entire life. 

"Is this what you want?" he asks softly, his hand just balanced on the curve of her waist. She smiles; it's not surprising that he's careful, and considerate. He was always going to be that. 

"Yes," she replies. 

And she reaches for him. 

....

After all the waiting, it goes like this.

He's looking down at her so intently, like he's trying to peel back the layers of her thoughts as she rests her palms against his sides; she glances up to meet his gaze with wide, unguarded eyes. 

It's a risk she's never usually willing to take, but she wants him to know that this is not a small thing to her. That he is not just anyone. Of all people she's ever been with this is not the same; this is something else entirely.

And whatever he finds in her expression seems to satisfy, because he smiles and lets her fingers twist into the fabric of his shirt before she tugs it up and over his head. He slides his hands around her waist and pulls her in close, skimming his palms over her lower back and dropping his lips to hers in a slow, sensuous kiss that quickly has her shifting restlessly in his arms, her fingers colliding with bare skin and ridged muscle. 

She's almost shocked by how intimate it is, when he reaches for the hem of her t-shirt and slowly lifts it over her head, watching her face like he can't bear to let his eyes land anywhere else. Like undressing her is not just a means to an end, but a privilege he's not planning to miss a moment of playing out in her eyes.

Her breath is shaky as he presses one hand gently to the small of her back, that first touch of his fingers on bare skin an electric reminder of how long she's wanted this. She tilts her head back and sighs as he kisses her throat, his free hand sliding up to undo the clasp on her bra, and then she's exhaling as she draws back to look at him. 

He's admirably resilient, the way he doesn't let his eyes roam immediately, or if he does he's pretty subtle about it, and there's a stretch of time where they're just looking at each other, his hands resting gently on her waist, eyes locked on hers as he measures her reaction in that effortless way only he seems able to do. 

He's always understood her, even when she doesn't really understand herself.

He's waiting for her go ahead and she can't help but smile as she tugs him closer to her, pressing them hip to hip as she backs them up towards her bed, watching the tender amusement in his eyes the whole time. 

"I'm still not going to- stop challenging you," she breathes, as he drops his lips to her pulse point and applies enough pressure to leave her shivering. "I'm not- going to agree with you- just because."

He stops and smiles against her, then drags his lips back to hers as his thumb slides down the line of her jaw. 

"Wouldn't have it any other way," he mumbles, and then she can't really focus on saying anything else. He's sliding his hands down to her breasts and her fingers tighten against his sides, startled by the intensity of her own response as he starts to map out her body, her every response to his touch.

When his lips mouth a quiet _okay_? she just nods, and her heart is so full of him it almost hurts. He's so reverent in the way he touches her she feels completely overwhelmed by the sheer emotion of it, and she realises she's been so desperate for him for months that waiting any longer seems impossible. 

It doesn't take her long to shed the rest of their clothes in a fit of impatience, and then she's sinking down backwards into the mattress with him in tow, laying back with wide, searching eyes as she looks up at him. 

It feels foreign to her, this startling feeling of intimacy and connection that she feels as he touches her bare skin and presses her into the bed to kiss her, deep and a little wild and something like electricity running through her as she rocks her hips up against his. He slides a hand down her body to press against the slick, hot centre of her, one or maybe both of them groaning aloud at the sensation, and as he starts to work in slow, teasing circles she feels like she's already most of the way gone. 

She's not nervous, exactly, about him seeing her this way, it's just that it feels like it means so much more. There's a breathtaking heat that settles low in her belly at the way his eyes darken when she breathes out his name, his fingers gently parting her as he tugs his mouth from hers to nip down the line of her throat, tongue and teeth scraping down her skin. 

She is already so ready it's almost surprising; she is never usually this easily worked up by a man but with the way he's touching her like he already knows every tiny inch of skin to make her lose a little more of her fraying self-control, she doesn't stand a chance. 

She's almost writhing off the bed when he slides his fingers into her and moves with a languid precision and skill that's not even a little surprising, her hips twitching up involuntarily in a way that so clearly gives away how far gone she already is. He smiles knowingly and kisses her with a tenderness that's at odds with the fierce, heady explosion of sensation he's delivering, and then he slows the brush of his fingers against her until his strokes become feather light and frustrating. 

"Tell me," he murmurs against her lips as he stills his motion inside her. "Tell me how you feel."

Her eyes fly open, surprised by the change in pace, and briefly she thinks about deflecting, almost like an instinct. Pretend this isn't what it really is, don't get hurt. 

But she can see the gentle knowingness in his eyes, can sense the way that this is him offering her something, offering her a way into more, and she shudders out one breath before she reaches out and takes it. 

"You know I love you," she says, around shaking breaths. "I have done for months- ah."

Her voice goes thready at the end; he started up his rhythmic motions again the moment she said the word "love" and she thinks there's something devious about that, but in this moment she can't really think it through enough to arrive at a logical conclusion. He's smiling down at her as she grips his shoulder reflexively, her lips parting delicately around the sound of his name.

"Yeah," he says, and he dips his head to claim her mouth. "I do know. I love you too," he bites down on her lower lip. "But you knew that."

She smiles against him too then, because yes, she's known that; it's just completely gratifying to hear him finally say it out loud. To have all of him right there for the taking, after so long waiting in the wings. And as he starts to work her body in earnest again, all she's really aware of is that he is so good, which is something else she's always known.

He can be a bastard though, and right when he has her on the edge, right at the point of begging him to just let her come, he's suddenly slowing his movements again and her eyes snap open, watching warily as he smiles at her, and her hips roll against his hands in search of the pressure she so desperately needs.

He doesn't give it, though, and she doesn't beg, out of principle.

His eyes are dark and lustful as he sits back, amusement bright in his eyes as he waits for her to take what she wants, and she does. She shifts herself up and moves, tumbling him onto his back as her thighs part over his, tantalisingly close to where she needs to be, just barely skimming over him so he can feel the heat of her sliding against him for a split second. His fingers dig suddenly into her hip, and she knows then he's every bit as strung out as she is.

She pauses only to meet his eyes once, asking the question, and finds her answer in the way he leans up and kisses her, his hand hot and urgent sliding around the back of her thigh.

 _Yes_.

She complies quickly, tugging his body so he's sitting up with her balanced in his lap, one hand tangling into her hair as her lips slide from his mouth to his neck. She bites down against his shoulder as she finally, finally slides down onto him, the sound of their combined groans sweet in her ears as she presses down and then stills over him, both of them adjusting to the fit of him all the way inside her, and to the stunning sense of fulfilment that only comes with a backstory as long as theirs. 

She's tight around him, and she's clutching his shoulders hard because after all the foreplay, the months of foreplay, of back and forth and pretending and delaying, this is so incredibly everything that she feels like she's already hurtling towards the edge of something fierce and uncontrollable. She shuts her eyes and she pulls him as close as she can, a small, pleading noise at the back of her throat as he gently grasps her hips, the tangled letters of her name tumbling from his lips as he draws back to look at her.

She opens her eyes then, and watches him watching her, his hand sliding from her hip up to her face where his thumb strokes, once, twice.

"Claire," he says, pressing his lips unsteadily to her throat, and she pauses, loves the way her name sounds on his lips when he's like this, so lost in passion for her that it sounds like worship and not just a name. She leans in and kisses him, slow and certain; he repeats her name like a prayer and she answers him yes, her hand winding round his neck as she lifts her hips and starts to move for real.

It's a little erratic, her movements over him unsteady; she's already so wound up that she's barely in control of her rise and fall over him, and she can feel him watching her as she arches her back and parts her lips, stumbling over words that sound a lot like please and yes and maybe even I love you. He doesn't let go of her once, his hands warm and steadying over her hips, her breasts, her thighs, and then one of them makes its way to tangle in the hair over her neck to chase her racing pulse as she starts to lose her rhythm over him. 

And then it seems he's finally through with drawing her out, because he turns them over in one smooth motion and presses her thigh up around him so he can bury himself in her so deeply she's gasping her way through his name as the new angle sets every inch of her alight. 

The words falling from his lips into her ear are heated and adoring, and it's only a matter of time before she's rushing headlong to a release that blows out the memory of any she's ever known before. She cries out as his hand slides between them to carry her along with his skilful touch like he already knows every single secret her body has to tell, and then God, she's there.

She comes right there and then with his name on her lips, and knows that anything less than this will never, ever be enough.

....

It takes a while for her to come back to herself after, for the world to stop being too bright on the very edge of her awareness. She just lies there, her vision still full of sparks, and feels the warm, solid weight of him pressing her into the mattress. He seems as stunned as she feels, the way he's completely still against her, his limbs heavy as he presses uncoordinated kisses against her neck.

He'll have to move eventually for the sake of her lungs, but for now she finds she doesn't mind the way he's heavy against her. It's comforting. Real. 

"We're doing this," she hears him mumble against her skin, and she puts her hand to the back of his head and cradles it against her. 

"We are," she confirms, just in case he was asking and not stating, and shivers as he kisses her deep and slow. 

....

He makes coffee the way she likes it in the morning, and brings it to her in bed. 

"We both said things" he says, sliding back in under the covers as he looks across at her. "Did you mean it?"

She props her head up on her hand, and for a moment there's a sharp, instinctive impulse to evade, to find a way to reset the playing field.

But his dark, steady eyes ground her, and she sets fire to her fear.

"I love you," she says, quietly, but so very surely, and he turns his head fully to her. 

The words hang between them for a moment, a striking realisation and a moment of clarity, her way of taking a running leap and throwing herself off the cliff and trusting that he'll be the water underneath to break her fall.

"I love you too," he says, and she smiles.

The truth is he's been catching her since day one.

  
  
....

Maybe it's the right time, and maybe it's not.

But life in all its fire and fury doesn't wait, so neither will she. 


End file.
